Congrats to all the young hams! My daughter Emily, WE4MB was 8 yrs. old when she passed the Tech. exam, 9 yrs old she passed the 5 words a minute CW exam. At 10 yrs. old she passed the General and Amateur Extra at the same test session. She will be 18 in a few days and will be starting college this fall.

If my 65 year old memory serves me right the youngest ham ever was a kid named Neil Rapp who became a novice with 5WPM code at 5 years of age. This was in the 1970's. QST ran a story on him with a copy of the sheet where he copied Morse Code at 5WPM. At 5 years of age the little guy could hardly write his name, but he copied the code.

Dick AD4U

PS: I just updated my post. After I posted this I googled Neil Rapp to see what showed up. He is still a HAM and is currently a chemistry teacher. His picture is under the first google "hit" that came up.

Just an update on my daughter Megan, KI4WXJ. On January 11, 2009 she passed her upgrade to Amateur Extra at the young age of 8. Her goal was to pass her upgrade before she turned nine and she did. She passed her Technician at 6 in July 2007, General in January 2008. While she's not the youngest, she's one of the youngest.

Congrats, what an achievement for an 8 yr old. I wish I would of started with my grandson earlier, but he just recently showed interest in radio.

Our VE Team had two 4-yr olds, one boy and one girl, who became licensed. We were amazed, but they were extremely intelligent children and even filled out the 605 Forms themselves. This was back in Morse Code days too. There was an article on ARRLweb, but the direct link to that was lost after ARRL redesigned their website. Luckily, you can still see it on The Wayback Machine:

My son Matt became a Novice at age 5 and 11 months with the call sign of KB9FLW in 1990. He is now K9MRW. At the time I contacted the FCC and asked about younger hams. They stated that they did not keep records on the youngest ham, but they could only remember one younger.

Guys, I've got egg on my face on this one. I'll have to plead old age for my mistake and it happening 27 years ago...dimming this 68 year old brain. I posted the other day that my son obtained his Novice Class license at age 5 and 11 months, and that was wrong. His initial Novice ticket was obtained at age 6 and 10 months. Sorry for the mistake. You can see documentation of this at: http://www.k9hl.com/custom.html

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